A Virus Conspires
by The Tesseract Seraph
Summary: A songfiction with the lyrics from At the Drive-In's 'Quarantined' intercalated. What if a Stardroid were forced Maverick? (Update: Chapters ten and eleven up! I WILL finish this.)
1. 06.01.45

  
  


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Author's Note: All random, weird ideas below are mine, with the exception of:  
Stardroids, Mavericks, and Mercury, © 2002 Capcom Co. of Japan, Ltd.  
"Quarantined", lyrics © 2002 At the Drive-In  
For a full list of every single song that went into the creation of this acid-trip through Mercury's neurons, e-mail xianszkhaas@yahoo.com.  
And please, be considerate readers: Read, and review!  
All dates are in the European dating system. (day.month.year)  


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**A Virus Conspires**

_autonomous machete for hands_

06.01.45  
I pray to God that you, whoever you are, who finds and reads this isn't offput by what I've got to say. Forgive me my vain repetitions and my lapses in memory; I'm writing this to remind myself of what I've lost and Hermes can only give me so much time to work in between those damnable lapses into the Virus.   
I had best start with my history; I can tell, from the way the Virus has begun working on me, that the older the memory the sooner it will be overwritten until I am bent and broken to the will and glory of Lord Sigma.  
Whatever happens, I pray that this will be enough for me to remember I am not some twisted creation of his. I am no mere killing machine to be pointed in one direction and set loose to kill what he would have me destroy; I am better than that, and let me only live through this and regain my freedom and I will prove it through his destruction.   


_warden and judge hide behind masks_

I take the only name you'd know me by from this world: Mercury, the central-most world of your tiny solar system. Also the name of one of your forgotten gods, the Herald, the Swift One, unerring in his message and rarely seen unless he needed to be. Sigma, naturally, would make a little pun of the name, thinking by stripping me of the rank of Herald and reducing my name to Quicksilver--mere metal, instead of the Fleet One--he would reduce me to something base like all his Mavericks.  
I digress; best I save recent history for later, when those memories begin to degrade. It would almost be a relief from the shame to have them gone.  
First: You of your so-named Earth know me as a Stardroid, one of the creatures who sat in Judgment of your world mere decades ago. That we had returned was an anomaly, and a frightening one to a war-torn populace like yours.   
But I aver that I was something, someone before that and that it would be folly to judge me simply based on what I was later called to do.  
I was, before being called to join the Nine, a medic. It is a position and a set of oaths that I have struggled even latterly to maintain--one that has made me indispensable, at least of late, to the Nine. My true-name, the one I had before becoming a Stardroid, was Kaykaran Qol-Tan--my surname from my father's brood and my first name meaning 'he weeps' from the tearlike marks on my face. God only knows it became infinitely more appropriate after my death.  
I did die; only Jupiter to my knowledge was so fortunate as not to taste Death's bitter cup before being one of our number. Memory declares I committed a suicide of grief, alone and friendless after witnessing the deaths of all I'd ever loved. It was, as I recall, my fault--for not accepting the damnable right of forfeiture I had forced on others by strength of will or sweetness of voice. Had I but done what I requested of all my medics and forfeited my sense of touch, I could have healed those who died for my own peculiar selfishness.  
All this, of course, is not what I imagine you would be looking for. My struggles are nothing to you; who or what I was before becoming the judgmental monster so many decry me as is immaterial. That I exist now is an anomaly noticed only be a few concerned persons, curious as to the identity of the new Maverick who so resembles the creature in the history books known as the Herald in those days of terror nearly fifty years ago. I yield to head over heart and subject you to no more of my self-pity--go, seek, and ye shall find, ye curious, every nuance of my history laid out to your prying eyes. Not here, naturally--to do so would be foolish, and I best preserve my chances of being remembered if you, the faceless they, have many documents seeded among the machinations of the Mavericks to search for, instead of the sole hope of a dying man.  
I go now; Sigma calls, and no longer may I exercise my last scraps of agency. Hermes can only hide these indiscretions for so long. 

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Contents of this document are © 2002 Kim Kondratieff.


	2. 07.01.45

  
  


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_wet raindrop lull_

07.01.45  
Once bitten, twice shy.  
An excellent thought for today, upon which I shall expound in my sagacity, as if I were merely playing at pundit with this last labor of my life. I choose such a perfect bon mot to exemplify my own foolishness--or arrogance, or pure, undiluted stupidity in believing myself untouchable. God knows it isn't a situation unknown among the Stardroids--we, the chosen of the Powers, free to walk where we will and issue judgment where we will, undying save when we are caught out...surprising in and of itself, but caught out in our own arrogance.  
We are neither all-powerful nor immortal; I suppose I have come to grips with that only lately, staring my own eventual death in the face with Sigma's hand around my throat and my heart to bring it down upon my head. I dug my grave with my own insouciance; now I am forced to lie in it and I balk at the edge. One would believe that, after being caught out once by Wily I would have it in me to know a trap of the same sort when I saw one.  
But I did not. I walked, with eyes open and pride secure in itself, into another mistake. I drove off all that I could, and laid down in the fire to allow it test me--and awoke, surrounded by Mavericks and uncertain why, exactly, no one could hear my cries for help.  
  
It rains today, though I do not know how I know. I've never yet, since becoming the unwilling scion of the Virus, been allowed to even so much as glimpse a window in this place.  
But I know it rains, and I know the passing of the days. The days are simple to mark--if I were so incompetent as to be unable to mark time by my own heartbeat, by the subtle motions of the electrons that define my 'programming', I would at least have this terminal to tell me.  
Storms are subtler. I am not Jupiter to know the lightning from inside out or Venus to commune with water or Pluto to know the will of blizzard and thunderstorm alike--my element is fire, and I should not know the machinations of raindrops.  
There is a certain blessing in this communion, though, as unknown as its reasons are and as unknowing as I am in taking a part in it. It is perhaps because it rained the day of my trial by fire, so that both the storm and the flame have equal claim from sharing me that single day.  
An interesting digression; one I must cut short. I pause to remind myself here that I am _Mercury_, ensouled by the terhai medic Kaykaran and empowered by the Messenger, Hermes. I will not allow Sigma to diminish me to a soulless killer, nor allow him diminish my name to weak and toothless Quicksilver. 

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Contents of this document are © 2002 Kim Kondratieff.


	3. 08.01.45

  
  


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_small rationing_

08.01.45  
There is no deceiving myself into believing that, as mere pawns of the Starsnuffer, the Mavericks are somehow less in their evil than Sunstar. At least, to me, personally, they have been no gentler masters than he ever was. Inexpert torturers they may be--they are more used to prying free information than breaking one whole to their will--but they are eager in the pursuit of whatever single tool they could use as influence. Psychic, sexual, physical, emotional, whatever little lever might be used to exert force, they endeavor to find.  
I will give them no joy of me; let them with their mortal tools try to break what held for centuries. Sunstar never bent me to his will; nor shall these pawns. Even with a second-hand substitute for the Severance, they cannot bind a malleability that is of intangibles they no longer believe. It took the last rogue seventeen hours to break--and they thought that was something special.  
And yet torture remains torture, and evil evil, for all I find it in smaller parcels of less subtlety here than ever I did on Starhaven. Pain and sadism and the pleasure thereof remain analogous, whether the torturer is an ageless destroyer of suns or an overeager scion of a misborn computer flaw.  
Hermes laughs; asking why I obscure what so obviously causes me this much agony. I say screw him--it isn't as if you care, nor as if I will wish to read of my own misery when I next to decide to retrieve this. It isn't as if I require sympathy from the faceless--for what purpose would I break my self-imposed blocks, only to have my words met with a dispassionate reader?  
Nor is Hermes the most interested companion to have in this sordid little venture--sometimes I believe us mismatched, I too much of a crusader and he too impassionate. For someone avowedly on the side of Life, he is as uncaring as they get--but then, perhaps he must be, to be an effective Messenger, to deal properly with the painful changes that he must effect to prevent stagnation.  
Moreover, perhaps it is not my place to accuse him of dispassion--after all, have not the Powers already lived through enough pain in their own short lifespans, and is this not a part of the reward? I begin to have a new respect for the bonds of the Nine, given their choice to resume life with all the myriad pains it has, even after looking forward to an eternity of peace.  
Not my fault that they made such a choice, though I must give Hermes credit for more loyalty than he is wont to show. Such perhaps is life--mortal or immortal.  
To conclude, I have been being imperfect as a lackey. So consummate spy as I, I know, must not allow an ounce of disgust to show for the enemy commander he falsely serves, no matter how foul. Even with the Virus riding me, I remain defiant enough that Lord Sigma sees fit to command his troops in horrors that few humans he so despises would perpetrate. So I must take more care--Sigma seeks Quicksilver to be submissive, so much so that he would fall to excesses as base as rape or gang-beating to bring the wayward newcomer in line. Malleable, yes--that is what he wishes; I will not bend, but I will give the seeming of it.  
Again we tread the razor's edge; how delicate a line is there between the appearance of submission and truly being submissive? 

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Contents of this document are © 2002 Kim Kondratieff.


	4. 09.01.45

  
  


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_exhumed the rhetoric of_

09.01.45  
I bothered to ask Hermes about God today. It was an incident singularly piquant in its irony; Kay, the eternal doubter who could bend God's words to suit his purpose, begging question of God's messenger--is there such a thing as the Divine Father, or are you merely a figment of my imagination serving a greater figment that has made kingdoms rise and fall?   
I am not sure I liked the answer. But then, why would I--agnostic by nature, always uncertain of what I cannot see--enjoy an answer that proved me, in all my pride, utterly wrong. A liar, at that--and an oathbreaker. Ultimately, however, I suppose I brought myself to this fate through my own doubt and my own arrogance. That they should go hand in hand--doubt in the divine and pride in the self--is fitting. He did answer; I should not belabor the point of my own fallen state overmuch in lieu of explaining the response I received.  
Brevis, his answer was little more than I already had received. Yes, there is a One who created the entire scheming, breeding, thrashing, living-loving-dying lot of us. Yes, there is an Adversary who willed that death might be. And no, not even we, within a breath of immortal as we Stardroids are and always will be, will understand quite what it means to be Creator.  
Affirmation, or repetition? He said it all with an air of one relating a familiar dogma, rhetoric meant to ease the mind of those simple enough to be misled by a simple statement counter to the faith they have held all their lives. Coming from one who knows he has seen the face of God, though, it seemed to hold a certain extra impetus. Either I have created a truly beautiful lie to deceive myself with, as the Virus would lead me to believe, or there is something beyond my _science_ that even I cannot rationalize away.  
Surely I have _felt_, as palpably as heat on a summer's day, the sheer malign sense that surrounds Sunstar. I know when he is in the Starsnuffer's control, and when he is not. But I have never felt in the same way the One's presence--as if evil held sway, or as if the only thing to exist were the darkness, and all we pursuing light have gravely misled ourselves.  
Or perhaps it is merely that belief is not as easy as thought.  
Have I had my prayers answered? Certainly not, I would answer--did not all I loved still die? Has not Sunstar continued to persecute me? Does the Judgment not continue?  
But then, have I exercised an ounce of force to undo any of these situations? Hermes is no devil's advocate, true, but he gives me no rest in my misery anymore. It is _he_ that puts me to question these intangibles, the certainties of God's indifference I had. Perhaps he knows something I do not; perhaps I begin to doubt my own mistrust; surely such times as these that I have fallen on push one more toward faith than uncaring.  
Counter-wise, did Rrakith not survive when I would have lost him to suicide or madness? I intervened, true--but how important was that to him? Was it the timing, or the person?  
Did not the Hunt cease, did not Terra remain alive, because I chose to act?  
Is deity an act, an object, a person, or a single will against the darkness?  
Yes, a hundred times yes--to be a god...is all of these. 

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Contents of this document are © 2002 Kim Kondratieff.


	5. 11.01.45

  
  


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_break the weak in single file_

  
11.01.45  
It was a mistake to lapse a day in my writing.  
Already my memory begins to fade; the details of my past-life have become haunting, tantalizing, utterly out of reach as the Virus consumes them. All I have left are the remnants of another's life, a name, and what trivial details I saw fit to record in this account. Shadows, fragments, and I dare not chase the fuller accounts for fear of linking them with this and risking a destruction of all of them.  
Or it could be, perhaps, that I have already forgotten where I put them.  
  
One by one by one are other unwilling Mavericks dragged by my cell. Brought by force or deception, these wretches, all are more worth your pity than I. Mauled about, mistreated worse than ever Sunstar dared, and still I maintain a coveted resistant flame, an inexorable will to live free that I daresay they will never expunge.  
But these creatures who pass me in the halls, who scream in the throes of their nightmares and beg for release, who gibber and wail and at last fall silent under a final blow from the guards--and then the next day awaken smiling, perfect in the rest of Lord Sigma...What consolation like mine have they? That they should snap so quickly, should give like reeds under a gale wind--lack they only my practice with abuse, with the torturer's whims, or is it more deeply founded? Have they no assurance than life persists without them, that there is a hope of rejoining it? 

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Contents of this document are © 2002 Kim Kondratieff.


	6. 20.01.45

  
  


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_sanction this outbreak - a virus conspires_

20.01.45  
O Earth, how many more of your children will fall before death's gape is sated with a glut of blood?   
Despair and death are both thick in my mouth, driven as I am in the Virus' fantasies to be a consummate assassin, no more a messenger nor medic for my skills are far more suited to heralding oblivion. I pace, I scream, I rage within the restrains they have wrapped me in, and I get no closer to freedom.   
Nor can I do anything to free my co-captives, these other poor souls who are no closer to waking from this nightmare than I. What can I do, dig my heels in, grab hold of a dying spirit, and decry the whiles of the Virus? Should I believe it would do me any good, I would rail against oblivion itself. To save myself, or even another, if only to so spit in the Virus' face. To think that someone could win...certainly there would be no other victory so sublime.  
  
O Earth, how long until your surface is purged of the memories of these beasts, these destroyers who would slay each other until your very oceans were red?  
Eradicate the humans. Expunge each cell. Capture and kill them one by one, delighting in the blood each death returns to the soil, the iron that someday we, in our immortality, may remold into steel, may fashion into new children of our own to let wander free and abuse this planet as they would. Laugh in glee as we tear these, the so-named children of God, from their rightful place as conquerors, throw them down in the dirt, make them taste what it is to be victims, as they have so often made us.   
And over, and over, and over, until you are sick of the death or until the Virus has crept into every pulse, twined itself around every thought so that you exist only to give it corporeal form. How few, how rare are they who succumb to the first, to be murdered with those they have grown sick of murdering. How common the second, how often I see behind the eyes of my fellow-Mavericks the spiritless Virus gazing back at me, and laughing...laughing... 

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Contents of this document are © 2002 Kim Kondratieff.


	7. 01.02.45

  
  


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_push becomes shove, days become months_

01.02.45  
It whispers to me. I hear it behind every thought, feel it breathing on the back of my neck as it chases me through these nightmares. No fleetness of foot, no alacrity of thought will save me this time; no matter how fast I run, no matter where I flee, it will catch me, will whisper its promises and laugh when I deny it, when I so feebly deny it...I tell it that I am above its madness, that I am not one of its base creatures to so blithely set aside moral and credo, natural law and love of life, and allow it move me.   
_It never listens._ Never. It speaks again its bloody promises, after a brief respite to allow me waste my breath, waste my strength in tangling it in a web of half-truth and oratory, as I have so many others. It refuses to close its hundred eyes, to give in, give up, leave me be. It waits in the abyss of sleep, lurks around every corner, ambushes me, forces me to hear its seductive words.   
Nothing will make it leave. Nothing will drown it out. Clawing out my own eyes to stop the insanity, to bring pain sweet enough to swallow the whispering voice, to tempt my captors into torture enough to make welcome the sound of my own fruitless screaming...none of these, none of these bring me surcease, none even the briefest moment to breath free...I would that I could live free, die the same way, that I would on that death cease to exist, be expunged from existence so never to face the One who judges for these crimes I commit, for this sedition with the worm eating...eating...eating at my heart, gnawing holes in my memory, tearing me apart from within... 

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Contents of this document are © 2002 Kim Kondratieff.


	8. 12.02.45

  
  


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_I seem to have forgotten the warmth of the sun_

12.02.45  
What consolation have I like theirs, they that have been welcomed into the bliss of the Virus' dreaming? Who am I anymore to defy it, what am I anymore that I have held out thus far when such sweetness and peace would await me if I would merely lay my burdens down...   
I resist. How much longer will I? I cannot deny that what draws me as moth to flame is as tangible as anything I've ever felt. I cannot pretend that it is not dragging me down. Might there be some trick to this, some clever riddle at the heart of the matter that, if I only transgress this self-enforced resistance, might allow me waken on a richer, more perfect life...  
...Submit, and be redeemed...? 

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Contents of this document are © 2002 Kim Kondratieff.


	9. 01.03.45

  
  


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_feeding frenzy it's contagious_

01.03.45   
A hunt today, dark and silent, culminating in a kill as sweet to the tongue as blood, to the body as sex, to the mind as poetry. Human death, no thing more glorious to revel in for a Maverick, nothing more pure to offer to the cause than a sacrifice, sanctified by spilt blood and rent flesh.   
The Virus is a dangerous companion, in its tantalizing near-perfection, bringing all of us as one into a pure lust for carnage, an end to they that have created us and set us free to roam the world. I slip, I think, to its songs of blood and glory, but not so far I do not remember who I am.   
I am a wolf at the door, a ravening hunter. I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. This is more perfect than all the worlds, than all creation, than faith, than meekness, than submission. If obedience wins me this, these singular moments of perfect joy in the death I once so futilely fought, then compliance is no burden. 

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Contents of this document are © 2002 Kim Kondratieff.


	10. 14.03.45

  
  


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_have trigger will travel_

14.03.45  
The Virus has at last engulfed the maddened little voice screaming at me from the back of my mind. There are freedom and communion in this perfect silence. At last, I can feel the extent of my redemption from blindness--the release from guilt Lord Sigma offers me. No more this false belief in the sanctity of life; no more this foolish denial of all that I am and all the Mavericks mean me to be. That it has taken me so long to come to this realization is shameful; but I must forgive myself of it as I allow the Mavericks to welcome me.  
I see now that what occurred before was not torture--merely an attempt to show me the error of my ways through pain. Agony is unsurpassed in clearing the mind--it is the greatest equalizer of us all in its purity of purpose. The lessons we learn in sublimest pain are those that remain with us--I thank the Virus that there were those willful enough, creative enough to teach me that. 

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Contents of this document are © 2002 Kim Kondratieff.


	11. 15.03.45

  
  


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_single sparks are spectral fires_

15.03.45  
Someone has scrawled in a clever amalgam a single word across the walls of my cell. Limned in red, it is a subtle blend of blood and greasepaint meant to long outlive its owner. 'Satyagraha', each letter writ carefully so as to be distinguishable against the melange of death and decay it was scribed upon.  
There was a human here.  
Satyagraha is a word that means resistance. I begin to wonder if some spark of the human condition of misery had not been instilled in me in those darker days, that I could not begin to see the glory the Virus had to offer me. Is this a disease of the psyches of humans bear, this stubborn refusal to see what is best for all ultimately? A peculiar condition, certainly.  
All the more reason we should wipe them from the face of the Earth. What they cannot learn now, they will never learn in the future; let us end their suffering before such confusion and pain and stubborn insistence on what cannot be infects anyone else. 

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Contents of this document are © 2002 Kim Kondratieff.


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